Matcha Tea - Use it!
What is this tea and why is it so good for you? Read all about its tremendous health benefits and why you should include it in your diet.
Matcha Tea - full of goodness!
Matcha refers to finely-milled or powdered Japanese green tea. The Japanese tea ceremony centers on the preparation, serving, and drinking of matcha. Lately though, the powder has also come to be used to flavour and dye foods such as mochi and soba noodles, green tea ice cream and a variety of wagashi (Japanese confectionery).
This tea is manufactured by preparing the leaves of the tea bush (Camellia Sinensis) before harvesting by covering them to keep from the effects of strong sunlight. This inhibits growth, turns the leaves a darker shade of green and promotes the production of amino acids that give the tea its sweet taste.
Only the finest tea buds are hand picked. After harvesting, if the leaves are rolled out before the normal drying process, the result will be gyokuro (jade dew) tea. However, if the leaves are laid out flat to dry, they will crumble a little and become known as tencha.
Tencha can then be de-veined, de-stemmed, and stone ground to the fine, bright green, talc-like powder known as matcha. The grinding process is very slow and labor intensive.
The flavour of this tea comes from its amino acids. The tea is graded according to its sweetness of flavor. Teas harvested later in the season are often coarser and a little more bitter.
The most famous producing regions are Uji in Kyoto, Nishio in Aichi, Shizuoka, and northern Kyûshû, in Japan.
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